Eric Carlsson

Biography

I study the intellectual and religious history of early modern Europe and the north Atlantic world, with a focus on the intersection of religion and Enlightenment thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Special areas of interest include theology and biblical scholarship, the Christian humanist tradition, religious renewal movements (notably international Pietism and early evangelical Protestantism), Jewish-Christian relations, and theories of secularization. My current research centers on Germany’s Protestant Enlightenment and the seminal figure Johann Salomo Semler; I am writing on links between demonology and anti-Judaism and on the place of body/spirit and letter/spirit dichotomies in the formation of “liberal” theology in the eighteenth century. I teach a variety of courses on thought and religion in early modern Europe and the Atlantic world as well as a two-semester survey of themes in Western intellectual and religious history from antiquity to the present.

Education

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.Div., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
B.A., University of Michigan